As China becomes one of the world’s biggest energy consumer and CO₂ emitter, contrarily implies that there is a huge potential and an urgent need for China to promote the development of renewable and no-conventional energy. Right now, China already has a variety of incentives and regulations to promote renewable energy development, but what about the potential quantity of renewable energy and what might be the policy options for China in the future?

A research group led by professor SHEN Lei from Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Security (NRES), Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research (IGSNRR), Chinese Academy of Sciences published two renewable energy related articles in Environmental Management (2010,46:539-554; 555-564).

The potential quantity of all biomass byproducts energy in 2004 is 3511 Mtce (Mtce is the abbreviation of million tons of coal equivalents and 1 Mtce is equal to10⁶ tce.), while the acquirable quantity is 460 Mtce. Biomass energy plays a critical role in rural regions of China. The geographical distribution and quantity of biomass byproducts resources depends mainly on the relationship between ecological zones and climate conditions. their estimation also shows that the total quantity of crop residues, manure, forest and wood biomass byproducts, municipal waste and wastewater resources are 728, 3926, 2175, 155 and 48240 Mt (million tons), respectively. Crop residues come mainly from the provinces of Henan, Shandong, Heilongjiang, Jilin and Sichuan. All manure is mainly located in the provinces of Henan, Shandong, Sichuan, Hebei and Hunan. Forest and wood biomass byproducts are mainly produced in the provinces or autonomous regions of Tibet, Sichuan, Yunnan, Heilongjiang and Inner Mongolia, while most of municipal waste mainly comes from Guangdong, Shandong, Heilongjiang, Hubei and Jiangsu. Most of wastewater is largely discharged from advanced provinces like Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shandong and Henan. Biomass byproducts’ energy distribution also varies from province to province in China. Based on the analysis of the market scale and industry development, the article argues that China’s biomass energy industry is still at a very early stage of development and that Feed-in Tariffs (FIT) might be the best policy option for China to promote its development of biomass energy. A successful enforcement of FIT in China needs some policy combination of special capital subsidies, R&D funding, tax incentives and pricing.

The feedstock utilization degree, CO₂ reduction coefficient of bioethanol, and assessment model of CO₂ emission reduction potential of bioethanol are proposed in the other article titled “Potential CO₂ Emission Reduction by Development of Non-Grain-Based Bioethanol in China”. The research results indicated that China can obtain emission reductionpotentials of 10.947 and 49.027 Mt CO₂ with non-grainbasedbioethanol in 2015 and 2030, which are much higherthan the present capacity, calculated as 1.95 Mt. It is foundthat nonplantation feedstock can produce more bioethanol so as to obtain a higher potential than plantation feedstock in both 2015 and 2030. Another finding is that developing non-grain-based bioethanol can make only a limited contribution to China’s greenhouse gas emission reduction. 

Moreover, this study reveals that the regions with low and very low potentials for emission reduction will dominate the spatial distribution in 2015, and regions with high and very high potentials will be the majority in 2030

Series Papers list:

1. Shen, L., L. Liu, et al. (2010). Development Potentials and Policy Options of Biomass in China. Environmental Management 46(4): 539-554.

2. Li, H., L. Wang and L. Shen. (2010). Potential CO2 Emission Reduction by Development of Non-Grain-Based Bioethanol in China. Environmental Management 46(4): 555-564.